September 11th And The Bush Administration: Compelling Evidence for Complicity Part 1
informationclearinghouse.info
Walter E. Davis, PhD
08/31/03: (Information Clearing House)
Introduction
Clearly, one of the most critical questions of the twenty-first century concerns why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were not prevented. As I outline below, there are numerous aspects regarding the official stories about September 11th which do not fit with known facts, which contradict each other, which defy common sense, and which indicate a pattern of misinformation and coverup. The reports coming out of Washington do very little to alleviate these concerns.
For example, the Congressional report released on July 25, 2003 by a joint panel of House and Senate intelligence committees concluded that 9/11 resulted in C.I.A. and F.B.I. "lapses." While incompetence is frightening enough given a $40 billion budget, it is simply not consistent with known facts. It is consistent with the reports from other government scandals such has the Iran Contra Affair which produced damage control and cover up but not answers to the more probing questions. But perhaps a comparison to Watergate is more apropos since we now have twenty-eight pages of this report, which the Bush Administration refuses to release. The report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is believable unless you are seriously interested in the truth. Under more careful scientific scrutiny, it does not answer some very important questions.
Newspapers across the country call for an investigation into Bush’s lies about the reasons for war on Iraq. Many people may accept the fact of Bush’s false pretext for a war on Arab people in a distant place, especially after the fact. However, few people will be as accepting if it is shown that this Administration was complicit in acts of atrocities against its own people.
The magnitude of the crisis is readily apparent by noting that 9/11 serves as a pretext for a never-ending war against the world, including preemptive strikes against defenseless, but resource rich countries. It also serves as a pretext for draconian measures of repression at home, including the cabinet level Department of Homeland Security and Patriot Act I, and its sequel. September 11th has become the cause for numerous other acts from massive increases in military spending and to a Fast Track Trade Agreement for the President.
To date, investigations stop far too short, the public is left in the dark on too many questions easily answered, and no one in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for any actions surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001. The National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States, which was formed at the insistence of the family of some of the victims, is continuing to hold hearings and a final report is expected by May, 2004. It remains to be seen if, after a two-year lapse, they can come closer to the truth about September 11th. I believe that this would only happen if public pressure were brought to bear and accountability demanded from the Bush Administration. Accountability for any atrocity should attract the attention of serious investigative reporters, media critics and even news commentators. That is their chosen responsibility. Who is to raise the question of why journalists and others in the mass media are failing the people of the U.S. and the world?
In this article, I outline twenty-two items of evidence and questions, each one sufficient reason to demand an investigation into why September 11th was not prevented. Together, these items suggest that the most plausible explanation of events is that the Bush Administration was complicit in the terrorist attacks. This should be a national and international scandal. What is being discovered will shock many people, which is one of the reasons for deliberate corporate media coverup. But a significant number of people within the U.S. see (or will see) the consistencies in the events surrounding 9/11 as described below, and what they know about U.S. foreign policy. Nevertheless, the degree to which this Administration is pursuing a course of world domination at any cost is unprecedented. One of the best ways of putting a halt to this destructive course is to expose the Bush Administration and insist on their accountability to the American people. Thus, the intent of this article is to help fill the void in the media on the issue of the Bush Administration’s complicity in 9/11.
Here is the official story: On the morning of September 11, 2001 four Boeing passenger jets were hijacked within an hour by nineteen Arab terrorists armed with boxcutters. Pilots among these terrorists took control of the commercial planes and changed course toward targets in New York City and Washington D.C. Two of the planes were deliberately crashed into the Twin Towers, causing fires within the towers, which melted the steel support structures, thereby causing the buildings to collapse completely. A third plane was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers on the fourth plane overpowered the hijackers and caused the plane to crash in Pennsylvania. This was an attack on America planned and directed by Osama bin Laden as the leader of Al-Qaeda, a previously obscure anti-U.S. international terrorist organization composed mainly of Arabs. This story cries out for further explanations, but nothing official is forthcoming. People are simply expected to believe the official version without question.
Evidence of Complicity by the Bush Administration in 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
The following twenty-two separate and related points, citing evidence requiring further investigation, and include questions that demand answers, were formulated on the basis of the information from the several sources cited at the end, which should be consulted for verification and documentation. These sources contain extensive detailed information and analysis beyond what is provided in this summary. I hope that this information will incite public outrage leading to full accountability.
1) The entire United States intelligence community knew of the 9/11 attacks before hand, including the fact that commercial jets were to be used as bombs; they also knew the approximate dates and possible targets but were called off their investigations. Western intelligence had been aware of plans for such terrorist attacks on U.S. soil as early as 1995. The plan was known as "Project Bojinka." It was known to both the CIA and FBI and was described in court documents in the trial in New York of Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Murad for their participation in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC).
Seven to eight weeks prior to September 11th, all internal U.S. security agencies were warned of the impending Al-Qaeda attacks. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was warned of the attack but did nothing to beef up security. At least two weeks prior to September 11th the FBI agents again confirmed that an attack on lower Manhattan was imminent. However, the FBI agents were commanded to cut short their investigations into the attacks and those involved. Agents were threatened with prosecution under the National Security Act if they publicized information pertaining to their investigations. Some field agents predicted, almost precisely, what happened on September 11th.
As early as 1997, Russia, France, Israel, the Philippines and Egypt all warned the U.S. of the possibility of the attack. Warning also came from came from several others sources as well. Recently (May 25, 2002), CBS revealed that President Bush had been warned in an intelligence briefing on August 6, 2001that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial planes for a domestic attack in the U.S.
2) There is incontrovertible evidence that the US Air Force all across the country was comprehensively "stood down" on the morning of September 11th. Routine security measures, normally in place, which may well have been able to prevent the attacks, or reduce their impact, were suspended for one hour while the attacks were in progress, and re-instated once they were over. Sequence of events:
8:46 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston smashed into the north tower of the WTC. The tower collapses at 10:28 a.m.
9:03 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston smashed into the south tower. It completely collapses at 9:59am.
9:38 a.m.: AA Flight 77 from Dulles hits the Pentagon.
10:10 a.m.: United Flight 93 from Newark crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Andrews Air Force Base is a huge military installation about 10 miles from the Pentagon. On September 11th there were two entire squadrons of combat-ready fighter jets at Andrews. They failed to do their job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C. Despite over one hour’s advance warning of a terrorist attack in progress, not a single Andrews fighter tried to protect the city. The FAA, NORAD and the military have cooperative procedures enabling fighter jets to automatically intercept commercial aircraft under emergency conditions. They do not need instructions from the White House to carry out these procedures, yet they were not followed.
American Airline Flight 11 departed from Boston Logan Airport at 7:45 a.m. Between 8:13 and 8:20 a.m. Flight 11 became unresponsive to ground control and radar indicated that the plane had deviated from its assigned path of flight. Two Flight 11 airline attendants had separately called American Airlines reporting a hijacking, the presence of weapons, and the infliction of injuries on passengers and crew. At this point an emergency was undeniably clear. Yet, according to NORAD's official timeline, NORAD was not contacted until 20 minutes later at 8:40 a.m. Tragically the fighter jets were not deployed until 8:52 a.m., a full 32 minutes after the loss of contact with Flight 11.
Flights 175, 77 and 93 all had this same pattern of delays in notification and delays in scrambling fighter jets. Delays that are difficult to imagine considering a plane had, by this time, already hit the WTC. The plane striking the pentagon is particularly spectacular. After it was known that the plane had a problem, it was nevertheless able to change course and fly towards Washington, for about 45 minutes, fly past the White House, and crash into the Pentagon, without any attempt at interception. All the while two squadrons of fighter aircraft were stationed just 10 miles from the eventual target. Unless one is prepared to allege collusion, such a scenario is not possible by any stretch of the imagination.
3) Neither the Joint Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Defense nor the President of the United States acted according to well established emergency protocols. Acting Joint Chief of Staff General Richard B. Myers stated that he saw a TV report about a plane hitting the WTC but thought it was a small plane. So he went ahead with his meeting. By the time he came out of the meeting the Pentagon had been hit. Whose responsibility was it to relay this emergency to the Joint Chief of Staff?
The Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was at his desk when AA77 crashed into the Pentagon. How is it possible that the National Military Command Center, located in the Pentagon and in contact with law enforcement and air traffic controllers from 8:46 a.m., did not communicate to the Secretary of Defense, also at the Pentagon, about the other hijacked planes especially the one headed to Washington? After he was notified, why did he go to the war room?
The actions of the President, while the attacks were occurring, indicate that he deliberately avoided doing anything reasonably expected of a President wanting to protect American citizens and property. Why didn't the Secret Service inform him of this national emergency? When is a President supposed to be notified of everything the agencies know? Why was the President permitted by the Secret Service to remain in the Sarasota elementary school? At 9.05, nineteen minutes after the first attack and two minutes after the second attack on the WTC, Andrew Card, the presidential chief of staff, whispered something in President Bush’s ear. The president did not react as if he was interested in trying to do something about the situation. He did not leave the school, convene an emergency meeting, consult with anybody, or intervene in any way, to ensure that the Air Force completed it’s job. He did not even mention the extraordinary events occurring in New York, but simply continued with the reading class. His own explanations of his actions that day contradict known facts.
In the case of a national emergency, seconds of indecision could cost thousands of lives; and it's precisely for this reason that the government has a whole network of adjuncts and
advisors to insure that these top officials are among the first to be informed, not the last. Where were these individuals who did not properly inform the top officials?
In short, the CIA, the DCI, the State Department, the President, and key figures around him in the White House, were ultimately responsible for doing nothing in the face of the mounting evidence of an impending threat to U.S. national security. Incompetence is a highly improbable explanation.
4) Prior to 9/11, the US intelligence agencies should have stopped the nineteen terrorists from entering this country for intelligence reasons, alone. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers' visas should have been unquestionably denied because their applications were incomplete and incorrect. Most of the 19 hijackers were young, unmarried, and un-employed males. They were, in short, the "classic over-stay candidates". A seasoned former Consular officer stated in the National Review magazine, "Single, idle young adults with no specific destination in the United States rarely get visas absent compelling circumstances."
There are several cases damaging to the credibility of the official accounts of 9/11. But the U.S. response to Mohamed Atta, the alleged lead hijacker, is most extraordinary. The FBI had been monitoring Atta’s movements for several months in 2000. According to PBS’ Frontlines, the Immigration and Naturalization Service failed to stop Atta from entering the U.S. three times on a tourist visa in 2001, even though officials knew the visa had expired in 2000, and that Atta had violated its terms by taking flight lessons. Furthermore, Atta had already been implicated in a terrorist bombing in Israel, with the information passed on to the United States before he was first issued his tourist visa.
5) How did many of the hijackers receive clearance for training at secure U.S. military and intelligence facilities, and for what purposes? Many of the terrorist pilots received their initial training in Venice, Florida at one of two flight schools of highly questionable credibility and with approval of US intelligence. Mohamed Atta had attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama; Abdulaziz Alomari had attended Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force base in Texas; Saeed Alghamdi had been to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. These are all names of identified hijackers, so why has the U.S. government attempted to deny the match? As early as three days after the 9/11 attacks, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III claimed that these findings were new and had not been known by the FBI previously. This claim is a lie.
Zacarias Moussaouri was arrested after his flight trainers at the Minnesota flight school, Pan Am International Flight Academy, reported highly suspicious behavior. He was greatly unqualified; he wanted to learn to fly a 747 but wasn’t interested in takeoffs or landings; he was traveling on a French passport, said he was from France, but could not speak French. When
contacted, the French said he was a suspected terrorist connected to Al-Qaeda. However, a special counter terrorism panel of the FBI and CIA reviewed the case and dismissed it.
There are numerous glaring anomalies, illegalities and scandals connected with Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekker’s Huffman Aviation School at Venice, Florida where other hijackers trained. Dekkers had no aviation experience and was under indictment in his native country, The Netherlands, on financial charges. He purchased his aviation school at just about the time the terrorist pilots moved into town and began their lessons. He has yet to be investigated even though he initially trained most of the hijackers.
Britannia Aviation was awarded a five-year contract to run a large regional maintenance facility at Lynchburg at a time when the company virtually had no assets, employees, or corporate history and did not posses the necessary FAA license needed to perform the maintenance. Britannia was a company with known CIA connections. It was operating illegally out of Huffman Aviation, the flight school which trained Al-Qaeda hijackers and was given a "green light" from the Justice Department’s Drugs Enforcement Administration, and the local Venice Police Department was warned to "leave them alone." Why?
6) How were the hijackers able to get specifically contraband items such as box-cutters, pepper spray and, according to one FAA executive summary, a gun on those planes? On the morning of September 11th, when the 19 hijackers went to purchase their tickets and to receive their boarding passes, nine were singled out and questioned through a screening process. But they passed the screening process and were allowed to continue on with their mission.
7) At a time when the U.S. intelligence community was on alert for an imminent Al-Qaeda attack, the Bush Administration made it easier for Saudi visitors to come to the U.S. under a program called U.S. Visa Express, introduced four months before September 11th. Michael Springmann, former head of the Visa Bureau at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia said that he was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Departtment officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. His complaints to higher authorities at several agencies went unanswered. In a CBC interview, he indicated that the CIA was indeed complicit in the attacks.
8) Most of the hijackers were Saudis, as is Osama bin Laden, and the Saudi Arabian government is known to give financial support to terrorist organizations. Why is Iraq and not Saudi Arabia a target if the US government is concerned about terrorism? Saudi Arabia’s government cooperates with US oil and arms industries; Iraq did not. Iraq is forced to now, of course. At least fifteen of the far-flung network of terrorist pilots received their money from the same source. There is specific evidence that Osama bin Laden continues to receive extensive support, not only from members of his own family, but also from members of the Saudi establishment. A New Statesman report stated that "Bin Laden and his gang are just the tentacles; the head lies safely in Saudi Arabia, protected by U.S. forces." The hijackers responsible for 9/11 were not illiterate, bearded fanatics from Afghanistan. They were all educated, highly skilled, middle-class professionals. Of the 19 men involved, 13 were citizens of Saudi Arabia.
9) Why were the FBI called off its investigation of Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Royal Family prior to 9/11? Moreover, why were the FBI Agents ordered to curtail their investigation of these attacks on October 10, 2001? The FBI has repeatedly complained that it has been muzzled and restricted in its attempts to investigate matters connected to Bin Laden and Al Qeada. One law enforcement official was quoted as saying, "The investigative staff has to be made to understand that we’re not trying to solve a crime now." FBI Agents are said to be in the process of filing a law suit agents the Agency for the right to go public.
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